


Somehow We Keep on Ticking

by DayStar



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 17:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2659700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DayStar/pseuds/DayStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past two days had been a nightmarish haze of screams, disbelief and exhaustion. He’d slept for about three hours. Clarke hadn’t slept at all. As he crouched next to a male Grounder who’d had his shoulder shredded with bullets, fixing his bandages, Bellamy couldn’t help but watch her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somehow We Keep on Ticking

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately after Season 2, episode 5, Human Trials. Hope ya'll like it!

The past two days had been a nightmarish haze of screams, disbelief and exhaustion. He’d slept for about three hours. Clarke hadn’t slept at all. As he crouched next to a male Grounder who’d had his shoulder shredded with bullets, fixing his bandages, Bellamy couldn’t help but watch her. She was moving with fixed, robotic motions even now, stepping from one Grounder to the next, a brief word here, a pale smile there. They rarely responded. He didn’t blame them.

Ten dead. Eight wounded, three of which probably wouldn’t make it. Most of their food had been scorched. And even now, the Grounders were being hovered over, restricted, guarded. Bellamy knew they couldn’t be allowed to go for reinforcements. For a force of enraged warriors to sweep over the pitiful group of humans and eradicate them. So he’d set a watch with their meagre forces, a watch that required far more hours awake than asleep. They couldn’t keep it up. They had to leave.

He wiped his bloody hands on the grass and straightened, the drained, crystal clarity that came from fatigue making him hollow. It took strength to approach Clarke, to see her fevered efforts as she bent over a younger girl that wasn’t moving, the bandages wrapped around her ripped middle stained brown.

He remembered Adam and the song she’d hummed as she shoved the knife into his neck. He remembered Jasper, and Clarke’s certainty that he would survive. He remembered his belief that she had been weak or delusional, and laughed at himself for it now. She was many, many things, but those were not two traits that made the list.

Clarke was on her last leg though. More than forty eight hours awake, most of them spent trying to stem a tide of blood… it was too much for anyone. When his boot scuffed against the ground she jumped, red, swollen eyes leaping to his face before she relaxed. Her gaze was shadowed with exhaustion, but that wasn’t his main concern. Tiredness could be cured. There was broken grief set into the soft lines of her face, a jaggedness he hadn’t seen before, and it was something Bellamy didn’t think anything as simple as time could erase.

“Bellamy.” Her voice was as thin and strained as she was. “I need some more bandages – has Octavia found any more cloth we could use?”

His chest was tight. “She’s still looking. A lot was lost when the fire got out of control.” It was hard – too hard – to say the words, to watch her falter and look down at the child set between them. He knew what she was thinking. Who she was thinking of.

Finn. Over the last few hours, Bellamy had found it harder and harder to actually believe what had happened in the small village. He could hardly picture the scene they’d stumbled onto when they’d heard the sounds of gunfire and screaming. He had expected to see many, many things when they’d ran into the clearing. He’d almost thought it would be something to do with Murphy, and cursed himself for ever giving the psychopath a gun. But it hadn’t been Murphy who’d been slaughtering unarmed people…

Bellamy realized he’d lost focus. Clarke was still staring at the girl, and it came to him that the Grounder was no longer breathing. They had to leave.

“Clarke…” He reached down, offered his hand. Seemingly without thinking about it, the blonde girl accepted it, her grip clammy and loose. Bellamy hauled her to her feet, led her away from the body, his stomach so tight he felt nauseous. He shouldn’t have been leading her anywhere. That wasn’t supposed to be how it worked between the two of them.

She was shaking, and when he let go she crossed her arms tightly across her chest. “Bellamy, we need to -”

Somewhere behind them, a tortured scream. When he twisted to look, there was an older woman hugging the body and wailing, the anguished sound a spike driving straight into his brain. Clarke let out a clipped sob, her hand rapidly rising up to clamp firmly over her mouth, stopping the noise. Her trembling got worse even as he watched, and it seemed like any second she would shake apart, all of her determined, competent seams unravelling in the face of what had happened.

The same instinct that had urged him accept her hug back at camp Jaha pushed him forward now. He wrapped his arms around her, drew her to his chest, and when she began to cry into his shoulder he made soothing noises, empty but for his need to ease her grief.

It didn’t take long for Clarke to regain control. That didn’t surprise him. The tears quickly dissolved into shuddering breaths, and a few moments later she lifted her head, stepped away. Bellamy let her go after a brief hesitation, averted his gaze as she scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand, both because she wouldn’t have wanted him to watch and because it was hard to bear anyways.

She was all business when she spoke again. “We need to get more food for them. Maybe Octavia could go out hunting and -”

“We need to leave.” The words had been said before – minutes after finding Finn, hours after, again and again – but Clarke had always refused. Bellamy put more emphasis into them, more force, and watched her react, an automatic stiffening, her chin jutting out.

He could almost be happy that they were about to get into an argument.

“We’re not abandoning them, Bellamy. We owe them -”

“What we’ve already paid,” he interrupted firmly. “We’ve spent two days here, repairing what we can. You’ve looked at everyone who was hurt, done what you can.”

“ _No._ There’s still more I can do. There’s – that one man, the older one, he still needs someone to look after his leg.”

“They have someone who knows medicine. He’s going to have to deal with it, because we can’t stay here any longer.”

“Bellamy, we have to.” She was staring hotly at him, but her voice cracked as she continued. “We did this. We did it, and now we have to fix it. We have to fix -” Clarke stopped, heaved in a few ragged breaths.

He didn’t say the obvious, that there would be no fixing what had happened. Nor did he mention Finn by name, because doing so would do nothing for her. “This isn’t your fault. You couldn’t have changed what happened. If anything, this is on me. If I hadn’t let them go -” It was his turn to pause, jaw clenched so hard it began to ache.

So much guilt. He’d seen what was happening to Finn. He’d known that the boy wasn’t walking in space anymore. Why hadn’t he gone with them? Or made them come back to camp first? God _damn_ it, he should have done something. Anything, besides what he’d done. And then maybe all these people wouldn’t be dead. Maybe they wouldn’t be facing a war of retribution. Maybe Clarke wouldn’t have that lost look on her face, like someone had dropped her hope in front of her and watched it shatter.

He couldn’t think of it. He had to see them safely back to Camp Jaha. Clarke, Octavia, all of them. “Look,” Bellamy rasped, pushing back the emotions, pushing back the voices that were whispering failure. “If we don’t leave, we’re going to be killed. That Grounder – he said the warriors would be back any day now. We need to put some distance between us and them.”

“Maybe we could talk to them. Explain what happened…” Even as she said it, Bellamy knew she didn’t believe it. He resisted the urge to reach out and give her a shake, to force her to be realistic. They had to be realistic, now more than ever.

“No. If there was ever a time for talking, it’s gone now. What would you do, if you’d walked into our camp and seen half of them slaughtered, the killers still there?” Her eyes tightened, face draining of what little colour it had left. She’d told him about how she’d nearly killed the one girl in Mt. Weather in an effort to find out what had happened to everyone. He had no doubt about what she would do if this situation was reversed.

Bellamy softened his tone. “We’ve done everything we can. Staying now would be pointless; it would just cost more lives. And if we’re dead, who’s going to save everyone still trapped in Mt. Weather?” If Bell was certain of anything, it was that the adults who had arrived wouldn’t. They’d proven themselves just as cold, just as inflexible as they’d always been. They wouldn’t risk their necks for a bunch of delinquents. “We owe it to them. We owe it to them to keep living.”

He had her. She moved away, her arms still crossed tightly across her chest, and looked out over the village. Murphy was standing guard off to the side, his fingers clutching the automatic weapon with white intensity. Octavia had disappeared inside one of the buildings. Most of the Grounders merely slumped against the ground, though here and there a few of them moved, slowly as instructed, trying to clean away the desolation. The mother was still crying.     

  After several quiet minutes, she turned back, and her lip was bloody where she’d bitten it. “Fine,” Clarke said, wiping the blood away, and he was momentarily glad that the word didn’t sound like an admission of defeat. Glad, that is, until she spoke again. “But we’re taking Finn with us.”

\---

Bellamy found him leaning against a tree on the outskirts of the village, the spear he’d taken with him within arm’s reach. When Finn heard him coming he looked up, took note of the gun pointing in his general direction, didn’t as much as glance at the spear. He smiled without humour. “Come to float me?” Finn asked, and there was very little emotion in the question.

Bellamy found his grip tightening around the trigger. “You’d deserve it,” he said tightly, “but Clarke won’t let me.”

He hated it, the way Finn’s expression abruptly lightened with expectation, the way he leaned forward. “Is she going to let me talk to her? To explain? I -”

“Shut up!” His vicious exclamation made the other male stop, and Bellamy had to take a moment to push back the rage. “You’re not going to talk to her,” he eventually managed to get out. “She doesn’t want to hear anything you have to say. We’re going back to camp Jaha, and you’re not going to even look at her while we travel. If you do, I’ll kill you. Am I making myself clear?”

Finn had stiffened, but he met Bellamy’s eyes with a fire that had nothing to do with fear. “Since when do I take orders from you? Since when do you speak for Clarke?”

“Since you turned into a murdering bastard,” Bellamy spat, and finally, finally there was a twist of emotion in Finn’s face, a drawing down of his lips and a furrowing of his brow.

He looked away, and his reply was quiet. “I had to find her. We’d already taken so long, I didn’t know what was happening to her…”

The excuses were met with a derisive snort. “So you murdered a bunch of clueless Grounders. Yeah, that was a present Clarke could really appreciate.”

Finn whipped around and glared. “They rushed me!” he protested heatedly. “I couldn’t do anything else!”

“Just like you couldn’t do anything but shoot that other guy in the head, right after he’d done what we asked?”

“I was doing what had to be done! What you couldn’t do! I had to protect Clarke, I’d do anything to protect her, and I have to do that because you’re too weak and selfish to care about what happens to her!” Finn surged forward, jerked to a halt only when Bellamy pointed the gun straight at him.

“You don’t get it, do you? You were supposed to be _good._ That was what she needed from you! Some guy spilling morals and doing the right thing because it was the right thing! You’ve messed her up, Finn, and I don’t think she’s ever going to get better. Did you even think about her? About how she’d feel? She blames herself for this just as much as she blames you, and it’s killing her!”

Bellamy was breathing so hard it felt like he couldn’t get enough oxygen. It felt like he was back on the Ark all over again, struggling to breathe, always struggling to breathe. “You can say what you want. You didn’t do this for her. You did it because you were mad and upset and your perfect ideals were crumbling and you needed something to take it out on. Don’t try and say I’m the weak one here.”

Finn was pale – so, so pale, like a washed out version of himself – and he moved back, leaned on the tree as though he couldn’t stand on his own. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and it was more like he was talking to the wind than to Bellamy. “I just wanted to help her. That’s all.”

“Well, you didn’t. Now come on. We’re leaving.”

Licking his lips, Finn reached into his pocket and drew something out. He stared at it for a long minute, and then suddenly threw it to Bellamy, who caught it with one hand, a startled reflex. Opening his hand, he looked at what was nestled there.

A watch.

“It’s her dad’s,” Finn said quietly. “She’s won’t take it from me. Please, will you give it back to her?”

Without a word Bellamy curled his fingers around the cold item, gazed at his fist for a moment before turning and walking away. Finn snatched up the spear and followed.

\---

The fire crackled softly. They were close to camp Jaha. No more than a half day trek away. On second watch, after Octavia had woken him and gone to sleep, Bellamy found that the little rest they’d gotten had done wonders. He felt sharper inside, clearer. The despair that had been biting at his heels had fallen back, not gone but no longer an immediate threat.

He wished Clarke would sleep.

Oh, she claimed she did – even now, she was curled up nearby, eyes closed. But beyond a few times when her body forced her to drift off, Bellamy was certain she hadn’t slept a solid hour since they’d left. And it was showing. She’d slowed them down today, tripping down a hill and spraining her ankle. He knew it was the fatigue, but nothing he said would make her admit she needed to sleep. He was fighting a losing battle.

The watch reflected the fire’s light as he twisted it in his hands. He’d never had one – they could barely afford food between the three of them, let alone something so frivolous – but it was a nice piece. Solid, despite the numerous scratches that marred its surface. He wiped some of the dirt off – recently accumulated, because he knew Clarke had cleaned it regularly – and sighed.

“Shit.”

The watch held tightly in his hand, he got up and walked the short distance to Clarke, crouched down beside her. As expected, her eyes fluttered open without him needing to say anything or shake her.

“The Grounders?” she asked, and her voice wasn’t even moderately sleepy. She’d been wide awake.

“No,” Bellamy replied. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Why are you waking me up?” she shot back immediately, and he had to bite down on his sarcastic response. Sometimes their arguing was good, sometimes it benefited them and the group. Today was not one of those days.

“Because we need to talk,” Bellamy said instead, and after a stretch of silence Clarke uncurled herself, sat up. There was a lethargy to the motion, a lack of quickness that he didn’t like. It wasn’t like her, she who was usually full of determination and energy.

“What do you want, Bellamy?” Clarke demanded in hushed tones, and he couldn’t find much hostility in her tired question.

“I wanted to give you this,” he said, and brusquely shoved his hand towards her, the watch sitting in his palm like a peace offering. Bellamy had been debating giving it to her, all through yesterday, trying to weigh the hurt and help of the matter. In the end, he hadn’t been able to decide what would be best for her. And it wasn’t until that comprehension came that he’d realized it wasn’t his decision, anyways.

The light from the fire played over her face as she stared at the watch, illuminating and then snatching away her bruises and scratches. In either lighting, she was beautiful. He’d always been aware of that, right from the first moment she’d confronted him on their crashed spaceship as he went to open the door. But then it had been a brief note on a long list, the same way he noticed the sun in the sky or the rocks on the ground. Now… now it almost hurt, the feeling that had been growing in his chest, the feeling he’d become aware of only after abandoning her – after she’d abandoned him.

Maybe it hurt so much because it had been the right thing to do.

She didn’t make any move to take it. “Where’d you find this?” the battered girl asked, and he so wanted to lie, to protect her from the truth. But Clarke had a nasty tendency of seeing right through him, and he couldn’t risk alienating her, not now. Not anymore.

“Finn found it on a Grounder.” He didn’t need to add that the Grounder was dead. They both understood that. “He apparently scavenged it after the mountain people threw it away. And then Finn… gave it to me.”

As one they turned, regarded the boy sprawled on the far side of the fire, away from all of them. Even Murphy was closer. He was sleeping fitfully, twitching and muttering words not quite understandable. Clarke was the first to look away.

“My father gave me that right before he was floated,” she said quietly. “Did you know?”

“I knew it was his.”

She sniffed, rubbed at her nose before nodding. “Yeah, it was his. And then he died. And it was mine, and look at all the luck I’ve had. It sure didn’t do that Grounder any good. And Finn…” Her brow creased, and she shut her eyes. “I don’t want it, Bellamy.”

He still held it out, gently but insistently offering it. “What do you want me to do with it then?”

“You can wear – no, never mind. Smash it, throw it in the river. I don’t care, just get rid of it.”

“It’s not bad luck.”

Her eyes fluttered open, the cool blue hard to see in the dim light. “It has to be,” she whispered. “There has to be some reason this – why all of this is happening. There has to be a reason.”

He could tell she wasn’t talking about the watch. Not really. Bellamy swallowed hard, swallowed the bitterness that was threatening to rise from his chest and spill out, tainting her. He couldn’t tell her what he believed, that the world was a terrible, terrible place, and bad things would always happen regardless of the talismans you carried. That they would happen to the ones you loved. She couldn’t hear that, she couldn’t believe it.

“Sometimes hard things happen,” he said instead, the words sitting hollow and inadequate between them. “Sometimes there isn’t any reason for it. But you can’t just give up.”

She let out a clipped laugh, and the sound held more tears than mirth. “I can’t give up. I can’t give up. Not when my dad’s floated. Not when my mother sends me to Earth thinking I’ll die. Not when my best friend is murdered, or when the people I’m supposed to be protecting die. I can’t give up. But Bellamy – what else is there? What has not giving up ever gotten me?”

“Aw, princess.”

Her hand moved quickly. Maybe he could have avoided it, maybe not. But in any case, he didn’t, and the slap landed across his cheek, rocking his head to the side. Give it to her, she could hit pretty damn hard.

“Go float yourself, Bellamy,” Clarke cried, and when she turned away, staring at the fire, she didn’t see him reach out and then drop his hands. “You act – act like your life has been so hard. But all you care about is Octavia. I’m trying to care about _everyone._ You wouldn’t shed a tear if everyone died, that gets to be my job. And guess what? It sucks.”

The words hurt, even though he expected them. Wanted them to come. Because if Clarke really hadn’t noticed the change – the change that’d been pushing at his head, slowly slipping his compass in a different direction – he wondered if maybe she didn’t see him as well as he thought she did. He wondered if maybe she didn’t see him at all, only who he had been. But this wasn’t about him. Not today.

Cheek stinging, he said the sentences carefully, each one artfully decorated with a lightly sardonic note. “Exactly, princess. You care. And what are you going to do? Stop? Let everyone down? Because that’s what you’re doing now. The silence, the refusing to sleep… all of it’s just one big letdown. And maybe I got the wrong memo, but I’m pretty sure letting people down isn’t really your thing.”

He leaned back, trying to enjoy the warmth, trying to listen to the silent girl beside him and hear what she was thinking. Before Clarke could reply, he added, “Besides, do you really think we would have survived without you? I thought the privileged were supposed to be educated, to be able to look at the facts. Without you, most if not all of us would be dead. I hate to tell you this, but it isn’t about you. It’s about a choice. Let everyone die, or try and help most of us live.”

They sat together for a long time. He couldn’t have said how long – it could have been as long as an hour. But eventually Clarke stirred. “What about Finn?” she asked, and there was a sense of reaching out, trying to find an excuse.

He crushed it immediately. “Finn made his choice,” Bellamy said harshly. “Now he’s got to live with it. But that isn’t on you. It’s on him.”

More silence, stretching on and on, and Bellamy thought that in a different time he could have sat there forever, knowing Octavia was safe, listening to the murmur of the fire and content with life. But that time was not now, and eventually he reached over, set the watch gently in her lap.

“It’s not good or bad luck, princess. It’s a memory. It’s something you have – that you’re lucky enough to have – of your father. Don’t let it get ruined just because you want something to blame.”

He stood up, stretched and then made to walk away. Her voice made him stop, turn back.

“Bellamy? I – I know you care. I didn’t mean to say it that way. And thanks. For my dad’s watch.”

The darkness hid the smile that pulled across his face, and he nodded his head gravely, a short acknowledgement of her words, before turning back to his post.

“Go to sleep, Clarke.”

Last thing he heard was a quiet snort and the soft rustle of her curling back up. A short while later, when he made his rounds about camp, she was breathing lightly, eyes shut tightly even as he walked by.

The watch was on her wrist again.          


End file.
